Lonely As I Am

So I had a screw in my tire. A rather large one, more of a bolt really, with a big polygonal head and it made a loud thwacking noise with every turn of the wheel.

And because I’m incompetent and overeducated in skills that are hardly applicable to any real world situations, I paid $17.32 for someone to remove my screw and balance my tires.

It was another typical Miami day, eternally about to rain with a breeze that didn’t do much besides reshuffle the warm, humid air around. The man behind the counter was old, jowly with white hair and he told me one and a half hours until they would get to my car. “That’s fine” I said, and handed him my car key. I settled in the waiting room where a TV with a slightly snowy screen was tuned to the local PBS channel, showing cartoons. You know, Clifford the Big Red Dog, Bernstein Bears, some shitty local bilingual cartoon. Some “don’t forget to love one another” message at the end of the show validates it as “educational programming.”

I tried to read my book but oh god, the story lines were so engrossing. Don’t you see? Andy really is just like everyone, even though he’s only got one arm.

Annoyed by the overly-loud and intrusive TV, I did what any true American would do. I went to the mall. No not just any mall. A giant outdoor mall-borg that I watched assimilate a plot of land as I drove passed on my way to work for two years. But don’t feel too bad, the land was previously occupied by another mall.

I walked, the tropical air clinging to my skin and oozing into my lungs occasionally interrupted by a blast of dry, cool, air conditioned air emerging from stores as people entered and exited. Peering at the awkwardness of a thong stretched across the cut off bottoms of mannequins, at the biota of this sordid little ecosystem. Mothers dragging their kids into the Victoria’s Secret to buy something lacy and red in order to entice tired drooping father into a mechanical fuck. Thirteen year olds too young to be anywhere else. The occasional sunburned tourist looking slightly dazed, perhaps because of the tight A/X shirt cutting off blood to their brain.

And this place makes me sleepy and dull, I can’t remember and I don’t care.

I want to go home.